THE STRAIT OF MAGELLAN. 117 



well as occasional damp patches, indicative of the presence 

 of springs. The sun set with an appearance boding stormy 

 weather, after we had proceeded for a considerable distance, 

 and shortly before dark we landed opposite a broad interval 

 between the masses of cliff, where the land gradually sloped 

 down to the sea, and the beach was strewed with numbers of 

 planks and other fragments of a wreck. The boat having been 

 secured and the tent pitched on the top of a bank overlooking 

 the Strait, and in the immediate neighbourhood of a rill of 

 water, we had our supper and turned in for the night. We 

 awoke between four and five next morning with the con- 

 sciousness that a gale had set in, and that the tent was in 

 some danger of being blown down about our ears ; and rising 

 speedily, we had the tent-pegs driven in, and lay down again, 

 to be roused shortly after by the watch announcing that the 

 sea had reached the boat. Knowing that if left where she 

 was she was certain to be carried away or stove by the waves 

 and that we would thus be left in no enviable predicament, 

 aU hands lost no time in rushing down to the beach to drag 

 her up to a place of safety. This was at length accomplished, 

 after nearly a couple of hours' severe exertion ; and as, on 

 returning to the tent, we found it almost blown down, we 

 shifted our camp to a more favourable situation, fortunately 

 succeeding in finding a very sheltered locality in a hollow 

 behind a natural hedge of barberries, from six to eight feet 

 in height, and nearly the same in thickness. 



As there seemed no prospect of the gale abating, and 

 consequently of our being able to rejoin the ship, for a day 

 or two, we resolved on making ourselves as comfortable as we 

 could on shore — a matter of no great difficulty, as, apart from 

 the high' wind, the weather was very fine, and we had no 

 anxieties on the score of food, it being an invariable rule 



